Kinshasa, Sep 6 (IANS) The first shipment of 99,100 doses of Mpox vaccines arrived in Congo, the epicentre of a global health crisis. A total of 200,000 doses will arrive by Saturday.
“Today we received 99,100 doses of the vaccine and the rest will arrive on Saturday,” Congo’s Health Minister Roger Kamba said at Kinshasa’s N’Djili airport on Thursday.
He claimed to control the virus soon. He especially talked about eliminating the virus in the most affected provinces like South Kivu and Equateur.
“These are the first vaccines available for adults,” the health minister said, reports Xinhua news agency.
He said the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) would be in charge of the vaccination campaign in the worst-affected provinces, although he did not give a launch date.
The Congolese health ministry plans to begin administering vaccines this weekend, according to a statement released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday.
WHO warned that “vaccines alone will not be enough to stop the pandemic”. It called on stakeholders to strengthen surveillance, risk communication, community engagement, clinical and home care coordination.
Congo, which declared ampox a national epidemic in late 2022, has reported more than 18,000 suspected cases, including 629 deaths, since the start of 2024, with five people dead, including four children, according to a statement released by UNICEF last Sunday.
The WHO declared ampox, formerly known as monkeypox, a global health emergency in mid-August.
—IANS
sm/
